Bio-Hazard Battle

Bio-Hazard Battle Screenshots

Overview

Do you ever just sit in front of your stack of game titles wishing for something different in a Shooter? Wait no more. Bio-Hazard Battle takes place in the far future, after the planet is virtually overrun by Toxic Bio-mutations. You are the pilot of a bionic spacecraft loaded to the nose with a spectacular arsenal of firepower. Your mission: blast those mutant vermin back to whatever slime hole they came from.

You can choose from four types of bionic craft, each with different weapons systems and adjustable difficulty levels for the novice through expert player. The medley of unique and disgusting horrors you get to battle is a tribute to the programmer's amazingly twisted imagination. There are nuclear crabs, huge poisonous amoebas, giant insects of all varieties, vast tapeworms, slime-worms and even gigantic praying mantises.

The backgrounds are varied and the action changes direction often. All kinds of power-ups are available for your shooting pleasure and depending on the skill level chosen, you have various numbers of continues. You even get to steal...um, borrow lives from your buddy in the simultaneous two-player mode. The action is fast and there are times when the screen is absolutely chock full of bio-nasties.

The stereo music hard drivin, perfect for a shooter; and the sound effects have to be heard to be believed (our favorite is a multi-segmented flying slime worm that dies in a domino-effect explosion that moves across your speakers like chain fire). Climb in your Bio-Ship and blast some biomutants in this fresh new shooter. It'll detoxify your day.

Bio-Hazard Battle video:

The stages themselves are nicely designed. There are eight levels (although the first level can barely be classified as one) in which you’ll be forced to maneuver around some tricky obstructions. For example in the fourth stage gelatinous blue goo comes straight up from the ground forcing you to quickly fly over it, or in stage three a bulky black worm pops out of the vestiges of an observatory. The levels become very difficult starting with the fourth one, which explains why Sega gave you the grandiose number of nine credits. You’ll need them a lot at those later levels. Something I noticed is that unlike Thunder Force III, where you can easily beat any stage by memorizing it, Bio-Hazard Battle is almost always difficult no matter how many times you’ve played a certain stage.

Visually, Bio-Hazard Battle is very well done, with many large and detailed enemies combined with some beautiful backgrounds. The jungle stage is a work of beauty in itself, with a few wonderfully animated insect-like enemies combined with a lush, green background that includes a number of gigantic bean pods - the product of biotechnological research gone haywire. In another example, what would be a generic battle against a gigantic plane on the sixth level is spruced up by nice graphical touches. After blowing away sections of the plane, you see tentacle-like growths protruding from the other parts of it - making it obvious that nothing on Avaron was spared from the organic onslaught.

The music is incredibly weird, but it fits the game perfectly. Every musical composition in the game sounds like it belongs in one of those low budget science fiction films, and they even fit the stage well. For example in the dank dark caverns there is a slow threatening tune and in the city it’s more upbeat and menacing. In addition the boss music is much like the stereotypical low budget flick music that everyone and their mother emulates when making fun of films like Godzilla vs The Sea Monster or It Came From Planet X. The sound effects are rather bland however. Your ship only spurts out tiny "bleeps" and "blips" with it’s amazing fire power. In addition barely any of the enemies actually make noises.